Angelheaded Hipster: This Marc Bolan documentary is at its best when it lets the T Rex frontman do the talking

The clue is in the title. Ethan Silverman’s documentary Angelheaded Hipster explores the life and work of Marc Bolan through the T Rex frontman’s music.

The film shares its name with a covers album featuring U2, Lucinda Williams, Joan Jett and other usual suspects. We glimpse these musicians in the studio as they belt out versions of, among other tracks, Children of the Revolution and Life’s a Gas, overseen by the veteran producer Hal Willner. The curiously uninspired results lack the eclecticism of such classic tribute albums as I’m Your Fan and If I Were a Carpenter, or indeed of Stay Awake, Willner’s 1988 resuscitation of vintage Disney tunes, featuring Sun Ra and Sinéad O’Connor.

Unhappily, many of the assembled artists’ observations about Bolan are as pedestrian as some of the musical interpretations.

The film is rather better when it’s a conventional documentary. There are amusing recollections from Billy Idol and Joe Elliot; David Bowie recounts his on-again, off-again friendship with Bolan; and Bolan’s son Rolan notes that Bowie became a guardian angel to the surviving family after Marc’s fatal 1977 car crash. Ringo Starr, who directed the T Rex concert movie Born to Boogie, beams as he says: “He was the best-selling poet in Britain. And he loved that!”

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Hopping between glam and proto-punk, he could rock boas, curls and top hats with equal panache. As the anchor of the Granada TV series Marc, he welcomed Generation X, Boomtown Rats, The Jam and Thin Lizzy. He once charmed a jeering 175,000-strong crowd. This film will leave you wanting more of him.

Angelheaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T Rex is on limited release from Thursday September 7th